Predict Consumer Adoption for Product Launch
Challenge
Launching new insurance plans for the 2006 Medicare Bill, Humana sought a combination of marketing strategy and product design that would provide competitive advantage and differentiation. Current tools are unable to analyze new product launches or competitive environments with hundreds of product offerings.
Approach
Icosystem developed an agent-based model (ABM) as a way of simulating, predicting and optimizing consumer behavior. We applied this technique specifically to understand how WOM impacts marketing and improve return on marketing investment. This model helped Humana understand how marketing initiatives are influenced by a rich network of interactions that include competitive messaging, government information, as well as direct exchange of information among consumers and between consumers and other members of the healthcare “ecosystem,” such as physicians, nurses, pharmacists, service professionals and sales reps.
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Predict Consumer Adoption for Product Launch
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Predict Malware Diffusion in Networks
Challenge
Mobile viruses are emerging as a new class of threats. Is it possible to predict how fast a virus is going to spread, and can one design reliable, cost-effective countermeasures?
Approach
Icosystem built an agent-based model of subscriber behavior and interactions and of virus behavior and propagation.
Outcome
Accurate quantitative prediction based on limited data and virus definition.
Designed effective interventions to slow virus propagation drastically.
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Identify Leverage Points in a Social Network
Challenge
Intelligence analysts want to explore the structure of social networks to predict the performance of terrorist groups.
Approach
Icosystem built a visual, interactive exploratory data mining tool for social networks tied to an agent-based simulation of group performance. Network theory is used to compute the structural properties of the social graph and the social status of individual nodes.
Outcome
Modeled the dynamic effects among leadership, military, intelligence, industrial/science sectors, terrorist groups.
Identified points of leverage in the network and strategies for gaining information or influencing interest in material, knowledge, and use.
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Reduce Time and Cost in New Product Development Process
Challenge
Redesign the drug development process to reduce complexity, costs and time while improving success.
Approach
Detailed simulation of decision-making and processes and visualization to identify sources of inefficiencies and design/test a more flexible networked, portfolio-centric clinical development organization.
Outcome
Reduced the new product development process from a 40-month, $25M process to a process that takes 1-year and $2.7M.
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Identify Vulnerability Points of a Complex Control System
Challenge
Identify vulnerability points of a complex control system (firemain, chilled water) for a U.S. Navy ship.
Approach
Icosystem built a simulation model of control system, fluid dynamics, detonation/damage. Evolutionary algorithms evolve damage scenarios.
Outcome
Discovered critical unexpected failure modes, prompting redesign of parts of the control system. Avoided potentially catastrophic accidents.
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Identify Online Influencers of Brand Perception
Challenge
Identify influential bloggers and websites in relation to the brand. Determine nature, causality, intensity and duration of influence.
Approach
Crawl and index thousands of target websites. Apply text mining. Extract influence network and map causal network using machine learning techniques.
Outcome
For any given topic or brand perception, a full report helps a brand manager assess the online landscape.
Permanent link to this post (62 words, 2 images, estimated 15 secs reading time)
Understand the Influence of Strategic Communications
Challenge
The success of Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) missions requires an understanding of how strategic communications combine with other initiatives (e.g., infrastructure development, humanitarian aid) to lead to specific outcomes.
Approach
Icosystem used our commercially derived agent-based modeling that simulates the effects of different communication strategies and interventions on citizens’ awareness, perceptions, and allegiances. The model describes the behavior of individuals and their interactions without the need to define general laws about a population. The overall behavior of a population emerges in a complex way from interactions among individuals and between individuals and their environment. Statistical analyses assume that “tomorrow will be the same as yesterday.” In contrast, agent-based modeling uncovers causal relationships that are not linked to a specific snapshot in time.
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Understand the Influence of Strategic Communications
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Predict the Effects of Word of Mouth
Challenge
Leading media agencies needed to integrate social network analysis, word-of-mouth and other non-traditional media with the rest of the media planning process.
Approach
Media media planners are using Icosystem’s Concentric-based tools in more than 20 countries around the world. Analysts experiment with strategies to energize positive word of mouth and compare the relative effectiveness of traditional media channels and word of mouth.
Outcome
Our solution quantifies the ROI of non-traditional media, like word of mouth, and allows us to analyze interpersonal influence between consumers.
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Optimize Marketing Strategy
Challenge
National casual dining restaurant chain aimed to maximize positive word of mouth and increase traffic among the young population, nation-wide.
Approach
We incorporate marketing strategy with product development to model future market share.
Outcome
Captured competitive activity for past years with more than 95% accuracy.
Optimization resulted in more than 5% ROI improvement.
Included economic factors such as gas prices to increase the accuracy and aid strategy.
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Improve Productivity While Optimizing Route Design
“The innovative route design approach invented by Icosystem is now being deployed and is part of the new organizational processes.”
–Raymond Redding, CEO, La Poste Mail
“La Poste is always looking for ways to improve the productivity of its mail distribution and keep mail carriers engaged. The outstanding quality of the connection between our mail carriers and their customers is an essential part of our brand equity and must be preserved. Because it addresses productivity and engagement simultaneously, the innovative route design approach invented by Icosystem is now being deployed and is part of the new organizational processes. Icosystem showed us the route!”
Permanent link to this post (104 words, estimated 25 secs reading time)
